Two Men, Two Revolutions, One True Change

               Two Men, Two Revolutions, One True Change

               Published in Marietta (GA) Daily Journal 10/29/17

The river of history is sometimes gentle, sometimes boisterous.  We often consider it a force beyond our control.

  Historian Arthur Schlesinger once remarked that “history is to the nation what memory is to the individual.”  However we define history and whether or not we enjoy its study, we cannot say that man has no control over it.  This very month, October of 2017, is the anniversary of the actions of two men who gripped history in their hands and slung it forward, affecting many nations, many centuries, and millions of lives.

            October 31 is the 500^th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation.  Specifically, it is the anniversary of the actions of one individual, Martin Luther.  This October is also the 100th anniversary of Russia’s Bolshevik Revolution, specifically the anniversary of the actions of Nicolai Lenin.

            Luther’s actions are well known.  By tacking his 95 theses on the church door in Wittenberg, the German monk bravely challenged the most eminent authority in the western world, the Roman Catholic Church. 

Lenin did not act alone.  One of many in a bevy of radicals, he became the leader and the face of the Bolshevik (Communist) Revolution.  As dangerously as Luther, Lenin challenged not a state church but a family, the Romanovs, who had ruled Russia for precisely 300 years.

            In 1517 Luther plunged Europe into religious wars that continued for centuries.  In 1917 Lenin led Russia into a 74-year socialist experiment that severely curtailed freedom and left millions in poverty.  Such has been the plight throughout the world of those living under socialism’s central planning, a bloody recipe that has everywhere left blood in its wake.

            As social/political upheavals go, nothing is comparable to these two events except the American Revolution and perhaps the 1948 Communist takeover of China.  Our misnamed Civil War aside, we Americans, thankfully, know little about internal upheaval that leads to hunger, displacement, or endless strife.  Our 222-year history, a brief one indeed, has been marked neither by constant religious wars nor by the designs of any singular, would-be tyrant.

            In Luther’s case, it was religious conviction that sparked the flame that set Europe afire.  Luther’s indictment of the medieval Catholic structure and its practices struck a chord.  The sale of indulgences was evil. The Church’s doctrine of salvation was amiss.  “Sola Scriptura” (Scripture alone), Luther pleaded.  And then, “Here I Stand. I cannot and will not recant.” Luther didn’t reform the Catholic Church, but he reformed the religious landscape of the West by bringing attention to Rome’s raw power.

            There has come unity between Catholics and Protestants, not in respect to theology but in diplomatic relations and in working for common goals.  Recently, Southern Baptist leader Russell Moore was invited by Pope Francis to a Vatican meeting of religious leaders.  Catholics and many Protestant groups have always worked together to fight abortion and to preserve the sanctity of marriage.

            There has been far less healing between the masses of Russia and its political class.  Russia now has elections and casts itself as a democracy; however, the nation is still drying off from Leninism and Stalinism.  Putin, for sure, has not reckoned with his communist past.  The irony of Lenin’s actions in 1917 is that a bad system of aristocratic, totalitarian rule was replaced with a bad system of party totalitarian rule.   Luther brought about change; Lenin did not.  Tyranny is tyranny, whether foisted on us by a family dynasty of aristocrats or a band of socialist radicals posing as deliverers of the peasants.

            And what can we learn from Luther and Lenin?  From Luther we can learn courage.  At the Diet of Worms he presented his case, facing excommunication and the threat of execution.  From Lenin we should learn that socialism by any name is a losing proposition.

            From Luther we can learn to keep a list of 95 theses in our pocket, ready to proclaim them when events and conscience so dictate.  From Lenin we can learn that socialism/Marxism/communism is little more than shared poverty and that sometimes history turns on those who try to advance evil.

            T.S. Eliot wrote, “We know little of the future except that from generation to generation the same things happen again and again.”

            Yes and no.  Lenin’s statues have been toppled, and now the city of Leningrad is St. Petersburg again.  Luther is revered around the world.

            Sometimes history does make sense and turns out well.

Roger Hines

10/25/17

            

Two Men, Two Revolutions, One True Change The river of history is sometimes gentle, sometimes boisterous. We often consider it a force beyond our control. Historian Arthur Schlesinger once remarked that “history is to the nation what memory is to the individual.” However we define history and whether or not we enjoy its study, we cannot say that man has no control over it. This very month, October of 2017, is the anniversary of the actions of two men who gripped history in their hands and slung it forward, affecting many nations, many centuries, and millions of lives. October 31 is the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation. Specifically, it is the anniversary of the actions of one individual, Martin Luther. This October is also the 100th anniversary of Russia’s Bolshevik Revolution, specifically the anniversary of the actions of Nicolai Lenin. Luther’s actions are well known. By tacking his 95 theses on the church door in Wittenberg, the German monk bravely challenged the most eminent authority in the western world, the Roman Catholic Church. Lenin did not act alone. One of many in a bevy of radicals, he became the leader and the face of the Bolshevik (Communist) Revolution. As dangerously as Luther, Lenin challenged not a state church but a family, the Romanovs, who had ruled Russia for precisely 300 years. In 1517 Luther plunged Europe into religious wars that continued for centuries. In 1917 Lenin led Russia into a 74-year socialist experiment that severely curtailed freedom and left millions in poverty. Such has been the plight throughout the world of those living under socialism’s central planning, a bloody recipe that has everywhere left blood in its wake. As social/political upheavals go, nothing is comparable to these two events except the American Revolution and perhaps the 1948 Communist takeover of China. Our misnamed Civil War aside, we Americans, thankfully, know little about internal upheaval that leads to hunger, displacement, or endless strife. Our 222-year history, a brief one indeed, has been marked neither by constant religious wars nor by the designs of any singular, would-be tyrant. In Luther’s case, it was religious conviction that sparked the flame that set Europe afire. Luther’s indictment of the medieval Catholic structure and its practices struck a chord. The sale of indulgences was evil. The Church’s doctrine of salvation was amiss. “Sola Scriptura” (Scripture alone), Luther pleaded. And then, “Here I Stand. I cannot and will not recant.” Luther didn’t reform the Catholic Church, but he reformed the religious landscape of the West by bringing attention to Rome’s raw power. There has come unity between Catholics and Protestants, not in respect to theology but in diplomatic relations and in working for common goals. Recently, Southern Baptist leader Russell Moore was invited by Pope Francis to a Vatican meeting of religious leaders. Catholics and many Protestant groups have always worked together to fight abortion and to preserve the sanctity of marriage. There has been far less healing between the masses of Russia and its political class. Russia now has elections and casts itself as a democracy; however, the nation is still drying off from Leninism and Stalinism. Putin, for sure, has not reckoned with his communist past. The irony of Lenin’s actions in 1917 is that a bad system of aristocratic, totalitarian rule was replaced with a bad system of party totalitarian rule. Luther brought about change; Lenin did not. Tyranny is tyranny, whether foisted on us by a family dynasty of aristocrats or a band of socialist radicals posing as deliverers of the peasants. And what can we learn from Luther and Lenin? From Luther we can learn courage. At the Diet of Worms he presented his case, facing excommunication and the threat of execution. From Lenin we should learn that socialism by any name is a losing proposition. From Luther we can learn to keep a list of 95 theses in our pocket, ready to proclaim them when events and conscience so dictate. From Lenin we can learn that socialism/Marxism/communism is little more than shared poverty and that sometimes history turns on those who try to advance evil. T.S. Eliot wrote, “We know little of the future except that from generation to generation the same things happen again and again.” Yes and no. Lenin’s statues have been toppled, and now the city of Leningrad is St. Petersburg again. Luther is revered around the world. Sometimes history does make sense and turns out well. Roger Hines 10/25/17

               Two Men, Two Revolutions, One True Change

               Published in Marietta (GA) Daily Journal 10/29/17

The river of history is sometimes gentle, sometimes boisterous.  We often consider it a force beyond our control.

  Historian Arthur Schlesinger once remarked that “history is to the nation what memory is to the individual.”  However we define history and whether or not we enjoy its study, we cannot say that man has no control over it.  This very month, October of 2017, is the anniversary of the actions of two men who gripped history in their hands and slung it forward, affecting many nations, many centuries, and millions of lives.

            October 31 is the 500^th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation.  Specifically, it is the anniversary of the actions of one individual, Martin Luther.  This October is also the 100th anniversary of Russia’s Bolshevik Revolution, specifically the anniversary of the actions of Nicolai Lenin.

            Luther’s actions are well known.  By tacking his 95 theses on the church door in Wittenberg, the German monk bravely challenged the most eminent authority in the western world, the Roman Catholic Church. 

Lenin did not act alone.  One of many in a bevy of radicals, he became the leader and the face of the Bolshevik (Communist) Revolution.  As dangerously as Luther, Lenin challenged not a state church but a family, the Romanovs, who had ruled Russia for precisely 300 years.

            In 1517 Luther plunged Europe into religious wars that continued for centuries.  In 1917 Lenin led Russia into a 74-year socialist experiment that severely curtailed freedom and left millions in poverty.  Such has been the plight throughout the world of those living under socialism’s central planning, a bloody recipe that has everywhere left blood in its wake.

            As social/political upheavals go, nothing is comparable to these two events except the American Revolution and perhaps the 1948 Communist takeover of China.  Our misnamed Civil War aside, we Americans, thankfully, know little about internal upheaval that leads to hunger, displacement, or endless strife.  Our 222-year history, a brief one indeed, has been marked neither by constant religious wars nor by the designs of any singular, would-be tyrant.

            In Luther’s case, it was religious conviction that sparked the flame that set Europe afire.  Luther’s indictment of the medieval Catholic structure and its practices struck a chord.  The sale of indulgences was evil. The Church’s doctrine of salvation was amiss.  “Sola Scriptura” (Scripture alone), Luther pleaded.  And then, “Here I Stand. I cannot and will not recant.” Luther didn’t reform the Catholic Church, but he reformed the religious landscape of the West by bringing attention to Rome’s raw power.

            There has come unity between Catholics and Protestants, not in respect to theology but in diplomatic relations and in working for common goals.  Recently, Southern Baptist leader Russell Moore was invited by Pope Francis to a Vatican meeting of religious leaders.  Catholics and many Protestant groups have always worked together to fight abortion and to preserve the sanctity of marriage.

            There has been far less healing between the masses of Russia and its political class.  Russia now has elections and casts itself as a democracy; however, the nation is still drying off from Leninism and Stalinism.  Putin, for sure, has not reckoned with his communist past.  The irony of Lenin’s actions in 1917 is that a bad system of aristocratic, totalitarian rule was replaced with a bad system of party totalitarian rule.   Luther brought about change; Lenin did not.  Tyranny is tyranny, whether foisted on us by a family dynasty of aristocrats or a band of socialist radicals posing as deliverers of the peasants.

            And what can we learn from Luther and Lenin?  From Luther we can learn courage.  At the Diet of Worms he presented his case, facing excommunication and the threat of execution.  From Lenin we should learn that socialism by any name is a losing proposition.

            From Luther we can learn to keep a list of 95 theses in our pocket, ready to proclaim them when events and conscience so dictate.  From Lenin we can learn that socialism/Marxism/communism is little more than shared poverty and that sometimes history turns on those who try to advance evil.

            T.S. Eliot wrote, “We know little of the future except that from generation to generation the same things happen again and again.”

            Yes and no.  Lenin’s statues have been toppled, and now the city of Leningrad is St. Petersburg again.  Luther is revered around the world.

            Sometimes history does make sense and turns out well.

Roger Hines

10/25/17

            

Departed Voices That Still Whisper

                        Departed Voices That Still Whisper

               Published in Marietta (GA) Daily Journal 10/22/17

            For a century or more, three men have ruled over us from their graves.  We still bear their mark. We live under their influence.  The ideas of Charles Darwin, Karl Marx, and Sigmund Freud don’t just linger.  They dominate.

            In America and Europe, Darwinian theory is science education’s default position.  In America’s science classrooms, Darwinism is the gospel.  If you question it, your intellect is in question and you’re as backward as those who doubt that humans cause global warning.

            As for Marx, don’t think socialism is dead.  The vast Union of Soviet Socialist Republics is no more – thanks to Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, Pope John, and the enlightened Soviet Premier Gorbachev – but active socialists are still everywhere.  In China, parts of Europe, Venezuela, and in pesky Cuba, to name only a few, socialists persist.

            And Freud?  The father of today’s talking industry (psychoanalysis, Dr. Phil, etc.) may be losing ground in psychologists’ offices, but you wouldn’t know it from examining college psychology textbooks.

            Darwinists still reject Aristotle’s time-honored scientific method, as do most science teachers who teach and preach Darwinism.  Aristotle insisted that the scientific approach to all questions and research should be to observe, record, and theorize, or draw a hypothesis.  He taught and practiced experimentation.  If the question is whether or not ivory soap floats, place it in water – many times – and see.  Theorize therefrom: ivory soap floats, or it doesn’t.

            Yet, regarding the origin of man, who was present to observe and record?  Not Darwin or anyone else we’ve been able to locate.  So Darwinists speculate and theorize without observation, record, or repeatable experiment.  How scientific or reliable is that?  Darwinists are people of great faith.  Does anyone truly think man’s origins can be either verified or falsified by any imaginable evidence?

            Darwin is not dead.  Or maybe he is and is being propped up by the field of education which, one would think, should teach us to examine more than one theory.

            Known, professing Marxists (socialists) are alive and well in America, and are neither secretive nor quiet.  Can we all say Bernie Sanders?  Never in presidential politics has an avowed socialist attracted and aroused as many voters as Sanders did.   Whether he practices what he preaches is being called into question.  He is doing well financially.  It’s fair to ask if he is distributing his wealth.  He wants the rest of us to do so.

            Turns out, there is a great difference between Democrats and Republicans after all.  Does anyone think Sanders could have run as a Republican?  What does the Democratic Party’s embrace of Sanders say about the Democratic Party?

            Karl Marx lives and whispers through Sanders and his socialized medicine, fake equality, and forced charity.  (Why should governments at any level subsidize the arts or non-profit charities?  Let individuals decide for themselves where they shall give their money.)  Marx is neither dead nor propped up. 

            It wasn’t Playboy Magazine publisher Hugh Hefner who began the sexualization of America.  It was Freud.  Hefner only commercialized Freud’s philosophy.  Yes, let’s call Freud a philosopher.  Like Darwin and Marx, he initiated a belief system, a religion as it were.  Denying the power of the territorial imperative (the desire for one’s own place, house, or territory), or the power of selfless love, Freud posits sex as the strongest human impulse or drive.

            Since the 1960s, college students have fed on Freudian thought.  If Hefner’s salacious pornography wasn’t available in the campus bookstore or somewhere nearby, the titillating ideas about sexuality from Freud and all the “sexologists” he spawned could be found in textbooks.  Adamantly opposed to religion, particularly his parents’ Judaism, Freud copied Darwin and Marx and created his own.  Whether or not psychologists still employ Freud’s message and methods, his religion still covers the earth.

            Freud is not dead.  Neither does he whisper.  He shouts from Hollywood and the seedy mansions of pornographers.  He is transported into the populace by hotel chains and into homes by AT&T.  The porn he birthed is ubiquitous.

            Darwinism, Marxism, and Freudism enjoy a stronghold granted them by academia.  All three are academia’s orthodoxy.  Darwin set out to find who we are and where we came from; Marx aspired to empower the proletariat by demonizing capitalism.  Freud sought to loosen us from our supposed “sexual bonds of sexual repression.”

            High atop their pinnacles they perch.  Wise we would be to rope them and give the rope a substantial tug.  The future of our children would be well served.

Roger Hines

10/18/17  

Rules? What Rules? Community? What’s That?

             Rules? What Rules? Community? What’s That?

               Published in Marietta (GA) Daily Journal, 10/8/17

             America is increasingly showing evidence of spiritual emptiness.  If the Las Vegas killer of this past week was a millionaire, a successful gambler, an independent figure with no political or religious affiliations, and a citizen with no known ax to grind, why did he commit such an evil act?

            As is our therapeutic habit, we are again asking why, as though there is no such thing as an evil act committed by an evil mind.  He must be ill, we say.

            Perhaps the killer’s non-affiliation with political or religious groups begins to shed some light.  Our nation was built not on therapy but on self-reliance and on a can-do spirit that eventually showed the world what political and economic freedom can produce.  Simultaneously we have been a nation of communities, neighborhoods, faith groups, Rotary Clubs, and political parties.  Our self-reliance and ruggedness have, from our beginnings, been tempered by a genuine social ethic, that of helping our neighbor and of joining with people of like mind to achieve worthy goals.

            This social ethic, especially its political and religious aspect, has its roots in the Greco-Roman tradition and the Judeo-Christian faith.  This doesn’t mean we necessarily like the Greeks and the Romans or that we are all Jews or Christians.  It is only to say that Americanism is primarily informed and shaped by ideas, institutions, and laws that originated in Greece, Rome, and Israel as opposed to, say, China, India, or Saudi Arabia.

            In spite of any shortcomings of Europe, America, and any other areas of the world that sprang from Greco-Roman / Judeo-Christian values, it remains true that the western world has produced more individual liberty, more groceries, more material prosperity, more help for the needy than any other political or ethical system known to man. 

            Why then are America and Europe having so much protest, mass killings, and general unhappiness? Why is campus unrest intensifying?  The answer could well be that we, or at least young adults, have become empty of purpose and meaning. 

Denying the faith of our fathers, we seek meaning in other things.  Politics we have found wanting.  Pleasure has left us sated.  Science can provide a description of the universe but offers no consolation for suffering and no meaning for human existence.  Though we have always had a measure of violence, more and more young adults incredibly share a manic joy in disturbance and destruction.   Their Internet-driven contagion spreads.  No longer impressed or delighted by the mysteries of life – friendship, beauty, sacrifice, babies, sunsets, faith, love – they seek something else.  They stroke their sense of grievance.  They cry.  They are empty.

            Western man’s loss of faith and hope is a topic which even secular thinkers and writers have addressed.  In his poem “Dover Beach,” Matthew Arnold wrote, “The Sea of Faith was once at the full, but now I only hear its long withdrawing roar.”   Another Englishman, G.K. Chesterton, wrote, “When a man chooses not to believe in God, he does not choose to believe in nothing; he believes in anything.”

            America has never had a President who did not profess faith in God.  Yet people of faith are more and more being marginalized and told to keep quiet.  They who say “Give faith a chance” have become pariahs.  They are dwellers in the past.  They don’t have fun.  They lack sophistication.  They are Bible-thumping throwbacks.

            There are many scriptural admonitions that point us toward a path that can cure self-absorption and emptiness: “Love your neighbor as yourself,” “Be kind to one another,” “Esteem others better than yourself,” “Children obey your parents,” and “Put away bitterness, wrath, and anger.”  These admonitions were once instilled in children and youth.  They were not necessarily religious, but cultural.  In a sense they were our rules. They promoted community.

            Our nation had better start obeying the old rules.  It is apparent that many18 to 21 year-olds were not taught them.  Whence comes our rules if not from homes, churches, synagogues, and schools?  Where are they being taught now?  Where and what is our rudder?

            Spiritual emptiness is not as prevalent among youths who enter the workforce after high school as it is among college and university students.  But then colleges and universities are not known for perpetuating America’s traditional values. 

            There’s hope for the spiritual vortex in which we find ourselves.  It lies in reformation, in reclaiming that which has always made better people and better nations.  The old rules, in other words.  A full Sea of Faith.

Roger Hines

10/4/17